Post by account_disabled on Feb 27, 2024 23:55:42 GMT -5
Evidence that Brics summits are adopting the routine features of the global governance circuit, witness the familiar jostling during this week's meeting in South Africa to fabricate an announcement and maintain the impression of forward momentum. The closest thing to a “deliverable,” to use the well-known irritating term, is a commitment in principle to expand the group's membership beyond the current five (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Even that is uncomfortable for India and Brazil, which are concerned about accepting more members strongly aligned with China. The weaknesses of the Brics as a policy-making forum are evident. The club has insufficient unity of purpose and little ability to enforce decisions. But the difficulty of maintaining coherence within an informal grouping is not new.
The Brics' current rival, the G7 club of rich countries seen for decades as a steering committee of the global economy, has also often struggled to achieve consensus. Effective international institutions fulfill various Job Function Email Database functions, including as a repository of specialized knowledge or powers and a means of establishing and enforcing standards. If used properly, the latter means that collective decisions can weigh heavily in the internal policymaking debates of its members. Among formal institutions, these attributes are clear, although inevitably limited by their shareholder governments. The IMF, for example, has expertise in financial crises and a rapid bailout lending capacity. It places conditions on those loans, such as rapid fiscal adjustment, a compliance imperative that helps borrowing governments resist domestic opposition to sometimes painful changes.
It is more difficult to discipline members within informal groups. The G7 built a reputation in the 1990s and 2000s as a steering group for institutions such as the IMF. But while it was able to agree to impose tough fiscal and deregulatory conditions on borrowing governments and act quickly to resolve systemic problems, such as the Asian and Russian financial crises of 1997-98, it had more trouble constraining its own members. Even the heyday of the G7 was marked by continuing conflicts over structural economic policy and exchange rates. France, tired of being continually bullied by the United States into promising economic deregulation, brilliantly sabotaged its commitments in 2003 by employing a creative translation of a G7 communiqué into French, promising a softer “réactivité” instead of a harsh “flexibilité.“flexibility. in the original) that Washington had demanded.
The Brics' current rival, the G7 club of rich countries seen for decades as a steering committee of the global economy, has also often struggled to achieve consensus. Effective international institutions fulfill various Job Function Email Database functions, including as a repository of specialized knowledge or powers and a means of establishing and enforcing standards. If used properly, the latter means that collective decisions can weigh heavily in the internal policymaking debates of its members. Among formal institutions, these attributes are clear, although inevitably limited by their shareholder governments. The IMF, for example, has expertise in financial crises and a rapid bailout lending capacity. It places conditions on those loans, such as rapid fiscal adjustment, a compliance imperative that helps borrowing governments resist domestic opposition to sometimes painful changes.
It is more difficult to discipline members within informal groups. The G7 built a reputation in the 1990s and 2000s as a steering group for institutions such as the IMF. But while it was able to agree to impose tough fiscal and deregulatory conditions on borrowing governments and act quickly to resolve systemic problems, such as the Asian and Russian financial crises of 1997-98, it had more trouble constraining its own members. Even the heyday of the G7 was marked by continuing conflicts over structural economic policy and exchange rates. France, tired of being continually bullied by the United States into promising economic deregulation, brilliantly sabotaged its commitments in 2003 by employing a creative translation of a G7 communiqué into French, promising a softer “réactivité” instead of a harsh “flexibilité.“flexibility. in the original) that Washington had demanded.
